Turbo keto smooth­ies

In­ter­ested in a creamy, dreamy and down­right de­li­cious way to fit into your party dress this week­end? Then you’re gonna love this: We’re shar­ing a keto smoothie strat­egy that whisks off up to 18 pounds in as lit­tle as 72 hours. “When you first go keto, there’s of­ten a ‘whoosh’ of wa­ter-weight loss that hap­pens as you shift into fat-burn­ing mode,” says Chris Bair, founder of Keto Chow—a com­pany fa­mous for giv­ing its slim­ming smoothie recipes away for free. “With the right smoothie, you get ex­actly the nu­tri­ents you need for max­i­mum ben­e­fits.” Nat­u­ral-health ad­vo­cate Josh Axe, D.C., C.N.S., agrees: “Keto smooth­ies are not only ef­fec­tive, they’re also one of the eas­i­est keto meals you can make. They’re a per­fect way to get re­sults at this hec­tic time of year!” T o get started, just dust off your blender. You’ll want to have a keto smoothie for break­fast, an­other for lunch and then have a sen­si­ble keto din­ner (de­tails be­low). You can even add some keto snacks, and you’ll still be get­ting “a very low-carb, high-fat diet that trig­gers the body’s nat­u­ral metabolic process known as ke­to­sis,” ex­plains women’s health guru Amy My­ers, M.D., whose brand of col­la­gen protein pow­der is pop­u­lar among keto smoothie fans. Dr. My­ers adds that by con­sum­ing min­i­mal carbs and only mod­er­ate protein, you deprive your body of its fa­vorite fuel source— blood sugar—“and this forces the body to burn stored fat for fuel in­stead.” When that hap­pens, fat does a fast dis­ap­pear­ing act. But how does keto also flush wa­ter weight? Turns out, each of us stores a spe­cial mus­cle fuel called glyco­gen, which is

one part sugar and three parts wa­ter. We burn through our glyco­gen within 12 hours of go­ing keto, and up to 10 pounds of sugar and wa­ter is gone. This is per­fectly nat­u­ral and safe, notes Dr. Axe, whose new book Keto Diet comes out Fe­bru­ary 19. An­other rea­son keto di­eters lose wa­ter weight: Cut­ting sugar soothes in­flam­ma­tion in the body, of­ten caus­ing the quick re­lease of fluid that is re­tained to buf­fer ir­ri­tated ar­eas. So the more in­flamed you are to be­gin with, the more wa­ter weight you stand to lose. As Dr. Axe con­firms, both your waist and over­all health ben­e­fit. The smoothie ad­van­tage What many of us don’t re­al­ize is that overeat­ing keto food can slow re­sults on the fa­mous plan, es­pe­cially if carbs and protein creep too high. Pre­vent­ing this prob­lem is a big rea­son keto smooth­ies work so well. Count­less stud­ies have shown that with shakes and smooth­ies, por­tions stay lim­ited to the size of a glass and we ex­pe­ri­ence lit­tle temp­ta­tion to go back for sec­onds. In fact, a Univer­sity of Ken­tucky study found that the ef­fect is so pow­er­ful, a cou­ple of liq­uid meals a day helps an av­er­age over­weight di­eter triple her weight loss. Nice! For most of us, keto smooth­ies will work bet­ter than typ­i­cal smooth­ies or shakes. “Any­thing that helps you stay in ke­to­sis nat­u­rally boosts fat burn­ing,” notes Dr. Axe. The drinks typ­i­cally in­clude two to three serv­ings of fat (from sources like cream, co­conut, av­o­cado and nuts) plus some op­tional protein pow­der, veg­gies, berries and fla­vor­ings. Bair—who threw him­self into keto re­search af­ter doc­tors rec­om­mended the diet as treat­ment for his epilep­tic son—notes that you can add elec­trolytes from leafy greens and ta­ble salt “to pre­vent the ‘ keto flu’ many peo­ple ex­pe­ri­ence as their body shifts from us­ing sugar as fuel to us­ing fat as fuel. So you’ll feel great and lose weight from day one!” Real-world wow! Bev­erly Jones, 50, was al­ready los­ing on keto when her hus­band was put on a med­i­cally su­per­vised shake plan to help con­trol his di­a­betes. To sup­port him, Bev­erly switched to keto shakes. “I Googled and found Keto Chow shake mix, which I made with heavy cream— so they tasted

They taste like milk­shakes— and they can make you a full pants size smaller in just 48 hours!

like milk­shakes,” re­calls the Arkansas ac­coun­tant. “I’m not some­one who likes to cook, so I loved that all I had to de­cide was what fla­vor to have. I lost 50 pounds in four months and reached a weight I had not seen since be­fore ju­nior high!” All told, Bev­erly is down 120 pounds!